The Improving Form of Manchester City

Man City have made a bit of a cold start to the 2014/15 season but the signs are there that they are about to recapture their form from last year

Included in yesterday’s post about Southampton’s defence was an interactive visualisation that allowed you to view and track the defensive form of each team in the Premier League. The data was based on our Expected Goals model as well as being adjusted for each team to take into account the strength of opposition faced so far.

In today's post you can see the same chart but for attacking performances. You can interact with the viz below to track the form of any team you like but we want to highlight the burgeoning form of one club in particular; Manchester City.

Chelsea are way out in front at the moment for goals scored and everything else that is important going forward; total chances created, shots on target, expected goals, etc. But City are getting close. You can see the upward trajectory of their attacking form below. Another couple of good performances from the Manchester Club and they could knock Chelsea off top spot as the league’s most potent attack going forward.

This of course brings City’s forward players onto fantasy radars and one player we are particularly placing hopes in for our own fantasy team; Sergio Aguero. Chelea's Diego Costa is rightly the number one player to own in Fantasy Premier League so far but as we discussed a couple of weeks ago he is no Luis Suarez. The race to become this season’s standout player in Fantasy Premier League is still wide open and if anyone can challenge Costa you’d have to fancy Aguero to be that man. The Argentine’s form has been excellent this season, without quite putting in any single performance explosive enough to turn heads away from Costa. So far his hamstrings have held up too.

Looking at other teams on the chart reveals Liverpool’s form has been decent enough that they should get back into the goals soon, but perhaps they will need Daniel Sturridge back and fully fit to truly compete at the cutting edge of goalscoring with City and Chelsea. Check out Manchester United on the chart too. Worrying average (the blue line ‘*’ represents the league average).